In April 2023, war erupted across Sudan, pitting the national army, Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the rebranded Janjaweed militia that together with the SAF carried out the Darfur genocide in the early 2000s. As activities of militarised political factions in Darfur surged more than twenty years ago, former president Omar al-Bashir, empowered this small tribal militia to eliminate the insurgency. Now, for over two years, the RSF campaign of terror, rape, sexual slavery, ethnic violence, and manufactured starvation has devastated the nation, often with the SAF either unable or unwilling to protect civilians, and at times actively engaging in indiscriminate bombardment and gross human rights violations that have worsened the humanitarian catastrophe.
According to a UNHCR Global Trends report and the Refugees Date Finder, by mid-2025, more than 3.4 million Sudanese had fled across borders in the largest exodus the country has ever seen. Most sought safety in Egypt (1.3 million) and Chad (1.1million), followed by South Sudan (587000), Libya (234 000), Ethiopia (101000), Uganda (65000), and the Central African Republic (30000). Three quarters of these refugees are women and children; almost half are children under 18. Inside Sudan, another 11.6 million people have been displaced from their homes.
Two years on, the conflict has reached a horrific zenith. RSF brutality is now self-documented in videos showing mass executions, torture, and the desecration of corpses. Sudan has become the new Yemen, inheriting the ominous title of the world’s “forgotten war”. It took the blood of al-Fashir to break the silence. Yet even that blood needed an interpreter: its warning was translated into cries from the heart of the metropole, from Harvard, where researchers monitored the RSF’s final advance and warned the world that a massacre was minutes away. The world listened to the translation and did nothing.
By the time the world paid some short- span attention, framing the conflict in itself has been used as a political cover. The BBC, for instance, understands it as a war between two generals. Yet, descriptors such as civil war, proxy war, and ethnic conflict are also applied frequently. As opinions diverge over the nature of Sudan’s war, one fixed element is the scale of the suffering: Sudan has hosted the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with millions displaced, widespread famine, sexual crimes, and a collapsed health system.
At its core, this war is the final, ruthless act of counter-revolution, to crush the 2018-2021 pro-democracy revolution. The grassroots movement was hijacked by the 2019 power sharing agreement. Instead of ending military rule, the hybrid military/militia-civilians arrangement empowered SAF, legitimised the RSF, allowed atrocities in Darfur’s gold-mining areas, and imposed unpopular IMF reforms and Israel normalization without public consent.
The counter-revolution scheme has been backed by a larger imperial project led by the UAE which openly offers military, diplomatic, and political support to the RSF. While Abu Dhabi encircled Sudan with a web of ports, airfields, and trade deals, its logistics corridors doubled as arms highways, creating a deadly exchange: blood gold leaves Darfur; drones, mercenaries, and banned munitions flow in. The ultimate prize is the permanent installation of an adjustable authoritarian order across the region, one that will never again tolerate grassroots democracy and will always sell its resources cheaply. One might almost find it ironic, were the tragedy not so utterly devastating, that the very political elite who rode the 2019 revolution to power are now busy laundering the RSF’s atrocities and shielding a genocidal militia from accountability, dutifully advancing the UAE’s regional agenda.
The RSF’s brutality, often framed as tribal political violence, masks its deeper role as a predatory economic empire. Warlords, mercenaries, and states converge in a ruthless imperial capitalism marketplace. Commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo “Hemedti” built a financial empire on gold, weapons, and security contracts. The RSF controls the Jebel Amer gold mines in Darfur, dominating production and trade. This gold finds a ready market in Dubai, which now handles 15 per cent of global physical gold trade. The UAE’s trade in precious metals surged by 27 per cent in 2024. This is no coincidence; it is a pipeline where resources from a genocidal paramilitary feed a global financial hub. The RSF’s allegiance to the global financial system now far outweighs its ties to any ethnicity, identity, or tribal root.
In 2013, the SAF chief-in-staff Omar al-Bashir formalized the militia under Hemedti, giving it legal cover to crush dissent. Its first international endorsement came from Europe. The 2014 Khartoum Process provided the RSF with funds and technical support to stem migration, making it Europe’s de facto border army in Africa. This legitimacy was a springboard. Deployment in Yemen in 2017 gave the RSF access to Gulf funds and weaponry, and Israeli spy technology. By 2023, it was a full-fledged war machine and economic enterprise with global patrons.
Compromised politics: The infamous Khartoum Process secretive deal
Hemedti knows his audience. He understands how to leverage the migration crisis in Europe.
The EU’s 2014 Khartoum Process, designed to contain migration from the Horn of Africa, systematically empowered the RSF by designating them as Europe’s primary border guards. This was a conscious choice. Despite overwhelming evidence of the RSF’s war crimes and atrocities in Darfur, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile, the EU channeled significant resources through this militia.
A 2017 investigation by scholar Suliman Baldo revealed that in 2016 alone, the EU allocated €100 million to Sudan, including €40 million through a “Better Migration Management” programme. Crucially, €5 million of this was explicitly earmarked for Sudanese law enforcement and judiciary. These were the sectors where the RSF operated with total impunity. This was not cooperation with a flawed state; it was the calculated outsourcing of Europe’s border control to a criminal enterprise.
The true nature of this partnership was laid bare in a startling public campaign in late 2016. Frustrated with the level of funding, the Khartoum regime abandoned diplomacy. RSF commander Hemedti publicly threatened to “reopen the desert” and allow migrants to flood toward Europe if the EU did not pay more. This threat, reported in Khartoum newspapers like Al-Intibaha as a demand for “ransom,” was echoed by the State Minister of the Interior, who demanded aircraft and radar systems as payment. At that point, the RSF was openly positioning itself as a private security contractor for Europe. The EU’s failure to condemn these threats or suspend its partnership was a clear act of complicity, effectively endorsing the use of human lives as bargaining chips.
This infusion of EU funds, training, and legitimacy did not create a neutral police force; it fueled the RSF’s predatory empire. The same investigation mentioned above documented how Hemedti boasted of arresting 20,000 migrants while his forces looted their possessions and trafficked people for profit. Vehicles seized from migrants were repurposed for RSF military operations, and EU-funded surveillance tools were redeployed to suppress domestic dissent and consolidate control over Sudan’s profitable gold mines. In effect, the Khartoum Process transformed a genocidal militia into a transnational protection racket, rewarding its brutality with international recognition and hard currency.
In Sweden, where I live, warnings about this disastrous policy were clear and early. On September 14, 2016, Sudanese activists Sarah Hamed, Shahinda Saeed, and I met with Left Party MP Christina Höj Larsen in the Swedish parliament, explicitly warning that the Khartoum Process was empowering a genocidal militia. On November 9, 2017 Sensus studieförbund hosted Sudanese activists Sara Hamed, Saddeldin Ibrahim and Yasin Ahmed in a talk about the Khartoum process and human rights in the Horn of Africa. June 2019 witnessed a demonstration organised by a group of Sudanese activists in Sergels Torg, Stockholm. Protesters held signs with slogans “EU funds killer militia” and “EU: Stop funding militia in Sudan to stop migration”. Dagens Nyheter’s issue on June 7, 2019, published an investigative article headlined “Researchers: Perpetrators of massacres in Sudan sponsored by Swedish tax money.” One of the researchers quoted in the report was the Sudanese activist Sara Hamed, whose expertise highlighted concerns that EU migration cooperation funds under the Khartoum Process empowered the RSF.
Our pleas fell on deaf ears, a failure compounded by the profound secrecy of the deal, which was reportedly withheld from Swedish MPs themselves. The risk that support could be diverted to serve repressive aims was clear. Yet the EU proceeded regardless. By financing a force whose core business is atrocity, the Khartoum Process did not reduce migration; it financed the very criminal enterprise that profits from chaos, making Europe an active accomplice in the RSF’s transformation from a desert death squad into a regional mafia-state.
By funneling resources to this militia state, the EU did not secure its borders; it financed the gravediggers of Sudanese democracy.
In the wake of the October 2021 coup, RSF commander Hemedti immediately weaponized the migration leverage the EU had handed him. In a video posted on social media in November 2012, Hemedti issued a thinly veiled threat to Europe over migration: “We have 8 million refugees here” he says, “We are the ones guarding the desert. If we open it…2 million will reach Europe”. He doubled down his warning addressing the international audience this time as he sat down for an interview with Europe – POLITICO in November 2021. His ultimatum was stark: back the new military regime or face a “big problem… worldwide” if Sudan opened its borders to the over one million refugees it hosted. He framed the coup as a “corrective action” essential to averting state collapse. Hemedti knows his audience and understands their interests and how to leverage the migration crisis in Europe. His statement was directly informed by the reality on the ground, as a shady service provider to the liberal elites in Europe who are striving to contain the growing dominance of far-right groups, but are not ready to expose the infamous ties with a genocidal paramilitary. That is how the EU’s investment in RSF border patrols is repurposed as blackmail to extract political legitimacy.
The EU threatened to suspend financial support for Sudan and paused key migration-related fundings, as a response to the military takeover. While the broader Khartoum Process dialogue continued regionally, direct cooperation with Sudanese authorities, including elements of the Better Migration Programmes, was frozen due to concerns over human rights and risks of aiding repressive forces during the civil unrest that took place in 2019. The Politico interview laid bare the coup architects’ contempt for democracy. While pro-democracy protesters were met with live fire, Hemedti blamed a “third party” for the killings. He urged the West to “set aside suspicions” and recognize the military as the true stabilizers, capable of sealing borders and mediating regional conflicts. This bravado, however, masked a refusal to relinquish power, emboldened by years of European outsourcing. The Khartoum Process’s complicity was now complete: its funds had not only armed the coup plotters but had taught them to dangle refugee chaos as a bargaining chip, directly undermining the civilian future the EU claimed to support.
Tragically, the EU-nurtured alliance between the RSF and SAF that executed the 2021 coup imploded into full-scale war by April 2023. The very forces Europe empowered to create stability instead created the world’s fastest-growing humanitarian catastrophe. By funneling resources to this militia state, the EU did not secure its borders; it financed the gravediggers of Sudanese democracy. The Khartoum Process stands as a damning indictment: short-sighted migration deals that empower criminals do not contain chaos, they export it, forcing Europe to confront the very refugees its policies helped create.
The Khartoum Process did not empower the RSF despite its crimes; but because of them. The militia’s CV was written in the blood of the Darfur’ 2003 war crimes and the 2013 Khartoum massacre, a proven record of ruthless violence that European policymakers saw not as a liability, but as the ultimate qualification for their border wars. This was a calculated decision to outsource Europe’s border enforcement to a notorious criminal enterprise, betting that its very brutality would create a deterrent effect strong enough to stop migrants from ever reaching the Mediterranean.
In 2024, Swedish arms exports to the UAE soared to over 6 billion SEK, making the Emirates its top customer. The sale took place after a UN report confirmed the UAE was directly arming the RSF. Sweden also ignored the UAE’s documented history of illicit arms transfers. A shocking investigation by Swedish Radio EKOT on December 8, 2025, has revealed evidence that Swedish developed AT-4 anti-tank launchers have appeared in Sudan’s civil war. Kerstin Bergeå, chair of Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society, called the findings “a major disgrace and scandal”. However, her claim that “the arms trade is impossible to control” is a disappointment that undermines accountability. The path to arms control in this specific case is not mysterious: UN Panel of Experts Reports (S/2024/65), Amnesty International, and Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) have repeatedly documented deliberate re-exports and embargo violations by intermediaries like the UAE.
In January 2024, the United Nations Panel of Experts on Sudan delivered its definitive assessment (S/2024/65) that the United Arab Emirates had become the Rapid Support Forces’ primary external backer, providing “large-scale military support” in blatant violation of the Darfur arms embargo. The Panel documented regular cargo flights from the UAE into Amdjarass Airport in eastern Chad, followed by overland convoys delivering weapons, ammunition, drones, anti-aircraft missiles, and mortars directly to RSF units. It concluded that this support was “critical in sustaining RSF military operations” and represented the main lifeline keeping the paramilitary force combat effective.
The report explicitly stated that the UAE’s actions constituted a violation of Security Council resolutions, including the arms embargo established under Resolution 1591 (2005) and renewed annually. These findings, based on flight data, eyewitness testimony, and material evidence, remain the most authoritative UN confirmation of the UAE’s role as the RSF’s principal arms supplier.
Credible sources reported that direct evidence of UAE “boots on the ground” with the RSF exists. A leaked 41-page dossier submitted to the UN Security Council in 2024 contained photographs of four Emirati and two Yemeni passports recovered from the wreckage of an RSF-linked vehicle in Omdurman after the SAF retook the area. The same dossier alleged that the UAE had supplied the RSF with drones modified to carry banned thermobaric “vacuum” bombs.
The UAE has a long, documented history of diverting arms to unauthorized end-users, directly violating end-user certificates it signs with exporters. SIPRI (2022) explicitly states: “The UAE, for instance, re-exported self-loading rifles it had purchased from Bulgaria to Libyan and Yemeni armed forces between 2011 and 2016.” This pattern alone should have triggered Sweden’s strict risk-assessment rules under the EU Common Position on Arms Exports.
Sweden must immediately suspend all arms exports to the UAE. Anything less is complicity.
The UAE was already under UN condemnation for its military involvement in Libya when it began diversifying suppliers, including Sweden, to evade scrutiny. SIPRI (2020) notes that “The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been militarily involved in Libya as well as Yemen over the past five years”.
The report explains the surge of the UAE purchase of arms stating that the country was “the eighth-largest arms importer in the world in 2015–2019. Two-thirds of its arms imports came from the USA during this period.”
The diversification of arms market was a tactic to evade criticism: “In 2019, when foreign military involvement in Libya was condemned by the United Nations Security Council, the UAE had major arms import deals ongoing with Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the UK and the USA.”
Sweden had overwhelming public evidence to refuse treating the UAE as a “trustworthy” customer long before approving the 2024 export deal. This is not an uncontrollable accident; it is foreseeable and preventable failure.
The images of RSF torture in al-Fashir will endure. Legal consequences are inevitable, and Sweden risks implication. There is a painful irony: years after the Lundin Energy prosecution for war crimes in South Sudan, the Swedish state itself now occupies a scandalous position.
Sweden must immediately suspend all arms exports and military cooperation with the UAE. An independent commission must investigate the 2024 arms deals, examining how risk assessments were conducted in the face of overwhelming evidence of all sorts of violations committed by the UAE. Anything less is complicity.
